Currently working in Montreal, Adam Linson is a bassist with a highly developed interest in improvisation that combines the real-time integration of acoustic instruments and sound processing. In the past he’s recorded as a soloist, in duo with sound processor Joel Ryan, and with Evan Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. First gathered and recorded in Berlin, Linson’s Systems Quartet includes trumpeter Axel Dörner, bass clarinetist Rudi Mahall, and percussionist Paul Lytton, with Dörner and Linson employing electronics to sample and process the signals of all the instruments in the group. The result is a labyrinthine web of sounds in which the immediate and acoustic mingle with the previously played and the newly processed, creating densely involving orchestral textures. Each of the three extended dialogues has the capacity to rivet a listener’s attention. As pieces evolve, a few sonic gestures gradually build into dense fields of sound, only to have layers successively stripped away to reveal solitary elemental voices. The histories and identities of sounds—their sources in an individual or instrument or a subsequent transformation—gradually disappear, the music coming into being in the very space that it creates.